Radar traps on Italian ski slopes?

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone on what currently happens on Canadian and/or American ski slopes. Here’s what happens instead in Italy.

This recent Christmas holiday period has seen more than one death on the Italian ski slopes due to ultra-fast skiers and kids without protective helmets (skiers under 14 in Italy must wear helmets). One Israeli 12 year-old on holiday with his parents died as he hit a pylon while another 9 year-old who lost control of her skis hit a tree and is now in coma, even though she was wearing a helmet. Speed was the cause of that accident. A 50 year-old in the meantime went off course and died as he was probably trying to imitate James Bond on the slopes (more for that below).

Each year about 40 people die on the ski slopes in Italy with a “mere” 30,000 injured. Many accidents apparently are also caused by new and more sophisticated artificial snow-making machines, not to mention high-tech skis and snowboards (much adored by the younger generation).

If driving on Italian highways is any indication, unless something drastic is done, I quite personally (who only learned to cross-country ski on the Prairies back in Canada) foresee weekend “disasters” similar to the death and destruction which we regularly see on Italian highways (and where the speed limit of 130 km/hour is still NOT observed). Generally speaking, Italians not only DON’T know how to drive if their lives depended on it, they don’t know how to keep the distance from one car to another and they also drive at the same speed in pouring rain—with the excuse that their cars have ABS brakes—and in fog. The result is quite often cars that are so mangled around trees that you can’t even make out the carmaker!

Another example of poor driving habits? When it rains in Rome (but not necessarily a Monsoon) you’ll read the following day in the papers of “70 accidents with 3 deaths”! I say to myself, “For a few drops of rain there are actually deaths”? I don’t recall the same in Winnipeg (and there I also went through Siberian-style snow blizzards). Add to all this also cellular phone use which is not only illegal while driving but which is still used by many, many “law-abiding” Italians. No doubt there’s probably more than one idiot skier out there who is travelling down the slopes while talking on his cellular phone (Italians adore the darn things. There are close to 40 million devices out there out of a population of approx. 58 million people!). One odd scene I saw just awhile ago was in Udine: a woman was calmly talking on her cellular phone while riding her bike…and with her kid seated right behind her! She was only using one hand to ride the bike while she was using the other one to talk on the phone. One can only imagine the tragic scenario in an accident.

Velocity is in the DNA of Italians, and their quite often atrocious driving habits are now carried over to the ski tracks (quite comical actually to see Carabinieri officers on skis telling skiers to slow down). Television ads don’t help either. Years ago for the promotion of Fiat’s “Stilo” car it showed Michael Schumacher in a Stilo having it out against Rubens Barrichello on a race track. Just imagine what goes through the mind of an 18 year-old punk who dreams of getting his hands on his first-ever car! Speed is the equivalent in Italy of being “cool”, a macho thing. Add to all this booze—and there is a LOT of mighty fine wine out there in Italy—and one can only imagine the industrial strength number of road accidents (some 8,000 deaths in Italy each year, way below what the Brits have managed to do by bringing down road deaths). As tragic as it may sound, I found it rather comical awhile back when in the Udine area a poor fellow died in his car: it literally flew in the air and landed on the balcony of a 1st-floor apartment! The poor sod was certainly NOT going at 60 km/hour in order to fly in the air. Now, I always grew up knowing that cars usually fly in James Bond movies (one in particular with Roger Moore), but not in real life.

So, my question is: what will we soon see on Italian ski slopes, radar traps, breathalysers and perhaps even points taken off one’s ski pass (as what already happens with one’s driver license)?